John Casesa is the Group Vice President, Global Strategy at Ford Motor Company, a position he was appointed to in March 2015.

Reporting to Ford President and CEO Jim Hackett, Casesa is the most senior leader overseeing global strategy and corporate development as part of the company’s commitment to accelerate its One Ford plan, deliver product excellence and drive innovation in every part of the business.

Prior to joining Ford, he was Senior Managing Director of Guggenheim Partners, where he led the firm’s automotive investment banking activities. In this role since 2010, he advised the auto industry’s leading companies and investors in connection with strategic transactions including mergers, acquisitions and capital raising.  

Casesa was one the industry’s leading auto analysts and investment banker for two decades. He served as managing director, Global Coordinator of Automotive Research at Merrill Lynch from 1999 to 2006 and as managing director of Schroders PLC from 1989 to 1999.  Prior to Wall Street, he was a product planning analyst at General Motors Corporation.

He also was co-founder and managing partner of advisory firm Casesa & Co., from 2006 to 2010. During this time, he was a co-owner of domestic and import dealerships in the U.S. northeast region.

His thought-leading research during two decades changed the way investors understood many aspects of the auto industry. In 1991, for example, he created the “Car Wars” report, which remains a benchmark for measuring automaker product competitiveness. In 2000, his “Who Makes the Car” report presented a new framework for understanding suppliers. In 2005, with World Resources Institute he co-authored “Energy Security & Climate Change” which foretold the clean car revolution. 

He was ranked as an All-Star eleven times by Institutional Investor magazine.  He helped write the New York Stock Exchange’s qualifying exam for analysts (Series 86) as a founding member of the Exchange’s Research Analyst Qualification Exam Committee, and he was a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s User Advisor Council.   

Casesa was born in 1962.  He holds a bachelor of science degree from St. John’s University and a master of business administration degree from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.